


Blood is Thicker than Water

by nigellecter



Category: Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-13 22:37:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5719612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigellecter/pseuds/nigellecter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roleplaying between me (nigellecter) and Tumblr user dreamsofthyestean. <br/>Errors are our own. Hannibal/Nigel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Hannibal traced his fingertips over the baroque-crafted handle of his wardrobe. He always dreaded the months spanning from November to January. Yet, it was not the copious amounts of Baltimore snow that pained him, but being forced to wear a heavy downcoat-his immaculate suit coordinates submerged underneath layers of fleece and feathers. The issue of finding an outfit that matched his every day winter-ensemble, both in style and color, had become a stressful practice.

That afternoon, the weather had turned especially harrowing-a bad omen of sorts. As a result, the good doctor’s phone had rung non-stop since the morning, his patients-unable to drive under the cumbersome circumstances-had all hastily cancelled their appointments. And while Hannibal had a strict one-day policy, forcing his clientele to phone a day prior to their session, under such abominable conditions,it was difficult for him to grow distressed with the impulsive cancellations.

He had spent the rest of that day at his desk, mounting greying paper against the table, and fashioning human forms from charcoal and pen. Always an avid enthusiast of the individual and a well-rounded renaissance man, he found great pleasure at the sight of human anatomy. From man’s slopping hips, to his crafted abdomen-homage to flourishing ,pink,bowels: ripe with health-and all contained within the bounds of a husky-boned framework. Hannibal wished he could bore his teeth into the fabricated flesh of his vellum creations, and tear sinew apart from the dimensions of pale tissue.

But his fantasies were crushed under the blinding reminder of his current reality, as the door bell gave a sharp ring : 1…2…3 times, and the good doctor was forced “awake”. He had little time to wash his hands free of the dusty black, which lined and filled the calloused patterns of his finger tips, curtesy of the charcoal he held just moments ago.

Straightening his tie, Hannibal gently swayed the door open, eyes growing wide with surprise at the disheveled figure before him. He had not seen his brother Nigel since they were both in their early twenties. But while Lecter had left home to pursue a career in medicine, his twin stayed behind-or rather-had developed a penchant for a frivolous lifestyle. By the time Hannibal had received his doctorate, Nigel and him had only kept in contact through a series of letters. Meanwhile, the other had already joined a livelihood of drug-dealing and night club chauffeuring.

Always feeling like the older of the two, despite being twins, the doctor, more than often, found himself responsible for Nigel. Since they were boys, his brother had always been the one to scrap his knees first, chip his tooth against the kitchen table-while wrestling the dog-, or take the left overs for himself, without asking if anyone wanted a spoonful first. And Hannibal, instead of climbing trees, preferred to bury his nose in a text book, or forced their father to teach him French. Having been praised and adorned like a gift from above,he had always been the one to set a positive example. On the contrary, Nigel’s hands were beaten red-knuckles but bloody pulps-by mama’s spatula, when he had slept with a neighborhood girl in their parents’ bedroom.

But,while Nigel was everything his twin was not, the doctor’s aptitude for cruelty-preceding since childhood-had certainly made him out to be the  _ worse _ of the two. Hannibal’s sense of empathy had been lost to the sea, and there were no morals in his world, but only  _ morale _ . Yet he could not reject Nigel, not when he was nothing but blood slathered against paling flesh. The other’s eyes, wet, dull, and trapped within tiring sockets, were but broken reflections of Hannibal’s own.

“Nigel…Nigel, please come in.” He said, dirtied hands ushering his brother inside.

“How long have you been standing here,before you made the decision to ring my bell? You’ll get yourself sick in this weather.” He frowned, motioning to charcoal-smeared fingers. “And excuse me if I look rather ill-kept at the moment, after all, you did not warn me of your  _ sudden _ visit.”

____

Contained within an empty shell of his glorious self, Nigel’s usually predatory, hazel irises glinting with fierce consumption, both for intimidation and letting the opposition know how unquenchable bloodlust takes over his aura. His motorcycle, all of the money he had garnered up from his club, which he had abruptly and unwillingly relinquished the proprietorship, still stands warm merely a few feet from him. Tainted layer of snow, unperturbed but only with his hot stream of blood painted across the pristine white sparkles and reflects the celestial bodies, too incandescent and extraordinarily dazzling. 

He doesn’t know what to expect. He hadn’t seen his carbon copy since his twenties, already debauched and tainted with the life of the libertine. Always footloose and fancy-free, since their earlier days, the twins were far from being the typical identical twins. He had seen those stereotypical ones that dressed same, acted same and the only friends that they had been were each other’s. Hannibal and him were utterly different, not one characteristic trait nor shared experiences. When Hannibal had been immersed in busying himself to be the pensive youth, fulfilling his curiosity about the world by burying himself under mounds of books, Nigel was one of those kids who couldn’t be contained in the house for one single bit, who is desperate to be unconstrained and a fireball of energy, constantly participating in sports and an exemplary athlete who had been broad, tall, tanned and exuding a bad boy persona. 

Always toned and having an athletic build over Hannibal’s more pale, thin and scrawny figure, he had gone through typical phases, smoking and drinking even when he was under the legal age and bedding one of the girls that had been enraptured by his charm. Although Hannibal had been the most flawless student with straight A’s and exceptional academic records to enter any prestigious universities in the world, he had barely finished high school, dropping out to pursue a career of becoming the underground drug lord. Already having corrupted by intemperance, club was his life. A dope-fiend, bouncer, bartender with a flair of violence and killings. His rise to fame as a notorious criminal had been expected, as he had a penchant for exerting force and spatting out virulent words at any opposition. His eminence of committing myriads of transgressions and taking parts in unsanctioned smuggling of firearms and shipments of drugs, containers’ full of them coming straight from South America. 

So vainglorious about his accomplishments as he had failed to see the recusancy that had been rising, almost like a rebellion from his subordinates who had been seen as complicity to his own crimes. Never gullible, but having forced to maintain the an audaciousness of the gang, he had been too intransigent to notice the animosity towards him. Either he had been revered or despised for his dauntless and staunch schemes. 

Having rendered incapacitated by one of his associates, he jeopardized his own life to garner up all of his gatherings before the manner escalated to take the turn for the worst. Forced to abscond Romania as he fell flat on his face about the only evidence that would pin him for three counts of murder, he had written a letter to Hannibal just after he had destroyed the tape and killed the person who had threatened him to kick him out of the country. With the rusty tang and dribble of blood still upon him, his scrawl, all in capital letters, appears on the thick sheet of paper, the ones used to sign the contracts for shipments.

_ Hannibal, _

_ It’s no fucking surprise you have become what you have become. A fucking esteemed psychiatrist. Why the sudden profession change? Your inveterate interest in human body had been unavoidable when I heard about the news of you becoming the youngest student ever to graduate Johns Hopkins with a fucking doctorate degree. After all, human body and mind is inseparable, on contrary to what people believed way back then. Although we live in the time with innumerable knowledge and information readily available to us, I would never be able to comprehend just what the fuck would happen to me in the future. I might visit you soon, I have no fucking clue when, it could be in a month, a year, who knows.   _

He thought he might have hinted his unexpected visit, but never had he expected that day to be a week after. The mail probably hasn’t even arrived at Hannibal’s grand mansion just yet. Still weakened by the prominent gash that would define just what kind of life he had lead up until now, the flight from Bucharest to Germany, then to New York feels more like a million years, crossing another galaxy. He knows there had been no one of his associates dispatched in the States now, but the one thing he is sure is that his life is still in danger. At least his unrevealed last name would help in his most ambiguous and sink-or-swim plan. He needs to disappear. Not from the world, but from his past life. 

Uncaring for Hannibal’s blackened hand as he clasps it tight, his gaze falls and shoulders slouch as he feels the torn stitches spilling more crimson, dripping as if Hansel and Gretel leaving their trail. Pallid and trembling form slumping even more as the warmth suddenly surrounds him as the embers from fireplace crackles and radiates, a sleek and hot hand, smears a broad stripe across his twin’s pressed shirt. 

“I.. Need you to make me fucking disappear. No fucking Nigel. I need you to kill me, not literally.”

A scowl takes over his face before his knees buckle, the elements finally getting to him as his eyes droop. Chapped lips starts to bleed and crack as he sprawls over the lounge.


	2. Chapter 2

Moments ago, it seemed as if they were but children, trapped in the ethereal illusion of an adolescent innocence. But they were forced to grow up far too quickly, stumbling awkwardly on all fours, they were barely able to make their first steps, as righteous human beings. When suddenly, their reality had shaken their eyes open. It gripped young lids between spidery fingers, a single ocular depressed in it’s socket, begged for shelter, from the tormenting flames of a cruel world. It was then, that bruised knee-caps were hidden behind starched pant legs, and play-time tears had turned into indifference. 

Yet, Hannibal was anything but indifferent, a trait that he had adopted-as a part of his marvelous persona-since childhood. In fact he was, if anything, passionate. Yet passion has little to do with euphoria, and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good, but endurance. Both: passion and patience, derivative of the same Latin root of pati- meaning to suffer, are anything but exuberayting. This was the ideology that the good doctor lived by-and his brother, Nigel, currently embodied. Passion, was both the forked tongue devil and downy-feathered angel, upon his shoulders.

He had not received no letter, it was true. And he thought about all of the countless anecdotes, written on yellowed parchment-and etched with lace borders- that had never made their way back home. How he had meticulously gathered the hairs ,which he had cut from his own scalp, and tied with a salmon ribbon. Strands that had reached the start of his shoulders, grown out in his youth, now cut with a steak knife at a rest stop-and forced into an envelope.

Long hairs were not impressionable on a male doctor- a display that made him appear,as if pulled straight from Scandinavian folklore-all sunken cheeks and sun-kissed shoulders. But, unwilling to lose touch with his heritage, he had severed the remains; of what was left untainted by American tradition, and secured it between paper and pen. Yet he knew, that his languid fibers had long been lost to sea, cut hairs, would never know the mouth of his mother’s grave; as he so requested they be placed.

Hannibal’s stomach stirred, but not out of pity. Perhaps it was a gnawing sense of hunger-a starvation-for something as tasteful like recreational murder. Nigel’s words linger like a holy premonition at the edge of his parted lips. And he wishes to do nothing more,than force the other’s jaw apart, using the torn sinew and broken bone, as an offering chalice to his seething insides.

His eyes move over the shattered form of his brother, kneeling on the ground, and spilling thin remnants of blood-from a cut lip-into the carpet filament. Nigel had managed to push the bounds of hell, as always. It was his natural ways, that angered the devil,and now Satan would take his revenge; even it meant leaving the cruor-infected trail of corpses, behind in his wake. But the good doctor could provide solace for his twin, one brought about only, by the likes of death. 

Still, Nigel would have to entrust him-put his faith in a soul so blackened and depraved-it barely could support itself on emaciated limbs-. But while his brother played the devil, Hannibal had his own ways of playing god- a hobby that would most certainly land him amid the deepest pit of a boiling inferno. 

The doctor’s voice was but a whisper, a cool sternness that seemed to escalate the silence within the room-aided only by the soft patter of hail against the window panes. “ I can make that happen, Nigel. But you do realize you will not come out of such a proposal, unscathed? Evidence is key.” He chuckled, blackened eyes shining with seditious intent. “ I might have to throw you to the dogs for an authentic effect, yet I take that isn’t quite what you want. Well, then. Luckily for you, you are in good hands. Although, may I offer you a bath first?” Hannibal said, motioning to Nigel’s blood smeared clothes and jowls-dried remnants of something morbid, stuck underneath his nails.

____

In Norse mythology, when one parts this life on the earth, one would travel to Valhalla, _ the hall of the slain _ . Suppose to be known as very majestic and enormous hall, filled with heroes, kings and creatures. Nothing grandeur about that and the concept has been always clear as mud to him. Whatever he did since adolescent years as he had inevitably parted the way with his brother as he took on a notorious profession, day in, day out, he would be marred and scarred with combat. considering the lack of his education and the list of misdemeanors would be too numerous to count. By age of twenty, he already had multiple accounts of assault. The slightest provocation kindling the unquenchable fire within him. As much as he had been very expressive and more or less genuine, his uncompromising nature, standoffish persona and his basilisk stare, a hint of animosity and malignancy eating him away like a contagion sweeping through his body, metastasizing through his organs. 

Never the happy kid as he felt anhedonic, except when he had relinquished himself to the ephemeral euphoria of copulatory pleasures, surrounded by debauchees. Playing the field, as having been blatantly labeled as a player, when he finally realized he had found the love of his fucking life when his life had been down in the dumps, hitting the nadir with the incapacitating evisceration rendering him immobile. Feeling worthless than ever as he thought about letting everything go, it would be months before he would be able to light a cigarette to feel the familiar rush of nicotine and letting himself out in a loose with another bout of speedballing high would cement the feeling of self-satisfied beatitude.   

His innocence and guilelessness taken away too rapidly like a whip of the belt. Dealing with sum of money, greater than a metropolitan city’s yearly budget had meant that he had cash to burn and he wouldn’t even bat an eye when signing the contract that would seal their inescapable fate. After ‘the notorious drug lord of Bucharest’ faded out from the map, taking an unexpected and abrupt leave of absence as his whereabouts became the talk of the town, some rivals presumed him dead and out of the picture, while other zealous subordinates occasionally had visited him, taking turns in supplying appurtenances; mostly morphine and pure coke, intravenously used in each arm. The numbing effect combined with their off-setting side effects, his body had built so much dependency and resistance as many nights at the hospital had him hooked on IV fluids and vile procedure to clear out his system. 

Still holding his muscular and tanned form, but feeling more like an already fired shell with a bullet casing left, standing like Canute against the tide. A calamity of his divorce soon would follow, denying the imminent catastrophe. The very act itself had torn an irreparable damage to his bleeding heart, shattered and ripped into pieces, never vowed to dive head-first into a hopeless love as he approached with all-or-nothing attitude. 

As he couldn’t make head nor tail of the path of his life, he works as if there’s no tomorrow. Putting every ounce of his energy into his club as he completely owns it, putting out a deceiving facade of a legal club while his clandestine activities of killing off his lifetime partners as he crookedly lured them into a deal of their lifetime. Almost too good to be true. Even he’d not see hide nor hair of them after he blasted them with his characteristic executioner’s style. 

His downfall happening too quick as his hidden room exposed, all of his unsanctioned activities and all of his possessions confiscated, he never stood a chance against the insider job, his capstone crumbling as rapidly as the castle built upon sand. Like a carrion attracting a family of worms, the club, which had been his absolute everything, had been seized in a chagrin. Nigel (Lecter) - no one actually knew his last name. The Lecter blood, going back centuries, and although he had been as narcissistic and smug bastard about everything that he did, felt like a black sheep of the family. 

“I have been fucking bathed and macerated in blood enough times. I trust you enough to leave pinning evidence that I’m perished for. I can take a new alias, or even act as a fucking impostor of one of your victims. Whatever works.” Wanting to turn to ash or disintegrate as he wants to be freed, more than anything. Snared by his own wrongdoings and having his own regrets plaguing him, an apex predator suddenly becoming a helpless prey is not his preferred outcome, nor as independent as he had been since adolescence, relying solely on Hannibal’s help doesn’t strike a bell either.  

“If you put me in a fucking bath, you’d have to drag me out before I deliquesce.” Not counterposed to the idea of melting into the caressing touch of the water and washing away all the grimes caked on his body, this irreversible situation he put himself in seems like a curate’s egg; perhaps to bond their detached relationships anew with the side effect of his name that he valued more than anything else, really, would have to go. 


	3. Chapter 3

He looked into Nigel’s infamous eyes, and recalled his brother’s wedding day. An event he could not attend, he remembered skimming over the wet parchment-which had arrived a month late, on a particularly rainy spring morning-. The letter had been delicately wrapped in a pink ribbon, and Hannibal had opened it with great care; but the hand-writing was not his brother’s.

Being able to presume it was written by the fair hand of a woman, the contents of the letter were most likely spoken aloud, as Nigel’s wife, etched epithets and obscenities into the paper. Hannibal knew his brother’s wedding was no lavish event, he was never one to be materialistic-or find aesthetic pleasure in the same indulgences as Hannibal. Still, he imagined Nigel cutting into the wedding cake, licking the pale frosting off of the blade, surrounded by the insides of a looming chapel, full of crosses and bouquets.

Their mother, although long gone, would be dressed in all black as if attending her own funeral, a fishnet veil obscuring her pruned features, and wet eyes. She would cry, and ask the neighboring guest for a handkerchief, watching from behind sunken irises-as her son walked along the aisle and greeted his wife’s gloved hands, between his own. Finally, when they embraced in a marital kiss, the attendees, would sob-the women would wipe their mascara-streaked tears with the back of their fingers-, and the men would pray to the wax bride, and her violet varicose veins. 

Unfortunately, Nigel’s marriage had ended in a plume of flames. Yet, Hannibal could not have imagined it any other way. His twin was filled with too much ire and vigor, that not even the strongest bond could override. As Nigel had a tendency to stay out late, and preferred the warm glow of club lights-to his wife’s caressing arms. Of course, there was always that, and the rising body count at the hand of his brother’s gun.  

He bent down beside Nigel, and extended a hand -equally as dirtied as his brother’s-forward. Hannibal would have the bath prepared in no time, and he fancied the idea of the lucid water, growing red with the blood, that once caked his brother’s exhausted carcass. All, Nigel would have to do was accept.

Immersing their scents together, he clasped his twin’s calloused palm in his own, and lead the both of them upstairs. Hannibal refused to make pit stops, but he would not be surprised if the hidden doors and lavish corridors of his house, piqued Nigel’s curiosity. The good doctor’s home was very much modeled after their quaint childhood palace, which was once filled with busy maids, and freshly-served apple pies for lunch-leaving a forever sweet aroma in the air-.Once again, they were children, exploring the vast halls of their manor, dreaming of monsters in the attic, and clutching one another tightly whenever they would hear a peculiar noise. Only, it was different now, and the times had changed Hannibal. He was no longer scared of the boogeyman, not when he had taken up the role of his adolescent villains, instead.

Leading them into his bedroom, Hannibal ordered Nigel to sit on the bed sheets. He feared his brother would fall asleep from exhaustion, caressed by the touch of satin sheets, and linen blankets-leaving dried blood in his wake. Yet,  _ any _ vital fluid was hard to wash from white sheets. And Hannibal had just bought a new set of bedding as _ early _ as last week.

“ I will return shortly, Nigel. I am going to go start the bath- _ don’t _ fall asleep on me,now.” No smile or smirk graced his features, and his sentence was left distastefully in the open. His footsteps were silent, as he exited the room, as if he was not their in the first place.

____

If there had been a software that obliterated the portions of his too dramatic life, he would wipe out those two years of dalliance with his divorcee. Preferring the ephemeral and corporeal, more tangible than romantic affections, Gabi had filled his life in both his zenith and nadir. He doesn’t even have to get pensive nor try to conjure up the strikingly vivid atmosphere of his dank flat, muggy and revolting with putrid scent of bodily fluids and his own agonizing groan, oblivious or better, loathing himself for making such an uncharacteristic whimper breaking out as angry red permeated the diagonal, eviscerated laceration. 

Perhaps this had been what his former associate, one of his most trusted entourages in the club. He had faced a particularly sneaky posse who intended to expose his crimes, but in contrary to how those law enforcement officers believed Nigel to be, a violent savage whose uncontrollable bloodthirstiness had a history of biting the bullet. Like an eagle looking over the vast woods in an aerial view, his suffocating forcibleness extended beyond the grounds of the club. 

Descending into love as Gabi’s bow glided across the cello, way bigger than her petite body. The cafe’s ambiance always bustling with generous crowds of people, his flat seemed detached as it reeked death and abomination as his incapacitated figure, his opposite leg bent over, pallid face drained of its sun-kissed and healthily glowing facade tremble as thick eyelashes flutter, corners of his almond-shaped deep-set eyes crease with excruciating pain surging downward. Irreparably soiled sheets bunched up by the foot of his metal-framed bed, creaking under his weight as his broad and slender form too compacted against the twin-sized bed. Afflicted by kindling anger, blazing through his body as he relives the cold blade guts him like a helpless fish flapping desperately against the riverbank, gills gradually slowing down as diaphanous orbs become muddy. 

Forced out from his demesne and desultory movements all he could make to sustain himself, Gabi’s original compositions are what keeps his battery recharged. Notes serving as assuaging elixir. If there ever had been an old chestnut, more like someone’s figment of imagination, this recollection would fulfill the criteria. Falling in love in the first sight when he had been recuperated enough to stagger downstairs for his favorite Romanian meatball soup and strong and bitter coffee he craved so much along with his pack of cigarettes. Each breath a statement of how debilitating several months it had been, the renewed appreciation for life and his plodding perseverance fuels further. 

Like a wildfire spreading, disregardful contemptuous remarks about their volatile and fugacious relationship supposedly ends. Never aesthetically caring for and self-indulgent as his love quickly faded, turning ethereal as their evanescent love ends along with Nigel’s typical relentlessness and possessiveness, headstrong to stretch out what is inevitable. Now all he had for that runaway couple had been sheer contempt. Especially antipathy towards that fucking runty cunt Charlie, how dare he seduce once who had been his healer, what he solely consider her as. Not a wife in widely accepted sense, but someone who had been sent to look after him, sort of like a guardian angel he didn’t have in his childhood years.

Languid, but still smoldering with unrestrained emotion shooting upward to meet Hannibal’s gaze, he doesn’t have to be reminded of those days as he follows and ascends those stairs, his oxfords toed off before he takes the step. How his emotions had taken a roller-coaster as that fateful day at the cafe. With Gabi’s phone number and address clutched inside his palm, his hold against Hannibal’s softer and warm one tightens, giving a firm squeeze. As his view frees from the labyrinthine of his past, he has a new life to look forward to. As much as he hates the name Nigel to go, putting aside his criminal mastermind and all those sadistic and sinister thoughts coalesce. He would recover from both physical and emotional damage, deal with both a child and a demon residing inside him as a body of late forties still struggles to live a responsible and less destructive way. Instead of dulcet of comfort foods which he had intentionally avoided and felicity of their palace along with his sister, Hannibal’s grand mansion is more evocative of Byzantine churches, the grandeur and earthy tones more severe and stern, closing towards him as if walls are moving.

Brows pinching as he wordlessly follows Hannibal’s order. Having been the natural leader and registering that the roles had been reversed now, he has no other choice but to follow it. After all, His body still feels rigidly awkward and it is rigorous to move his disused muscles. Surely, not an inch of the house had been meticulously constructed and lavished with luxuriousness. All he cared for had been his motorcycle, cared thoroughly better than his smashed and trashed body. 

Feeling the adrenaline rapidly fading as weighty lids slowly shut, he feels a smoldering driblets of blood soak through his jeans, sweat and blood already seeped through his thin undershirt. Never the one to admit nor exhibit a sliver of weakness as teeth digs into his lower lip, a minute scowl flashes as he watches Hannibal’s broad form turn. He hadn’t noticed it before, but he seems to be outmatched on his twin on both height and weight. Perhaps his gauging had been off, but his brother seems more herculean than he ever had been. 


	4. Chapter 4

Hannibal sat beside the tub, watching as the water slowly filled it to the brim. He imagined the faucet-gushing the blood that he had washed down the drain only weeks ago. And he wondered, if there would be a day when all the horrors of his passions, would come back to nip him in the neck. There would come a time, perhaps, when his skull too, would be placed upon a mantel, and his photo would be hung on the wall-kissed gently in his wake, by a lover, or perhaps a crazed devotee.

He toyed at a lose strand of twill, coming apart from his pant leg, and he frowned-thinking of pulling on the string-and the expensive fabric falling lose. It was like falling in love, he thought, the idea easily pulled one apart, as twill fabric did pants. Yet, it was difficult to say that he had ever loved-traditionally . Of course, there was the idea of concept, and Lecter found it far easier to fall in love with a thought-grow love sick from a moment,than with someone of his own kind.

He  _ knew _ how blood tasted, on the tongue, or fresh from a heart. The organ was placed in his open palms, eyes slivered, it was the most precious thing he had ever been given.

Yet he could walk the earth, press his bare feet into it’s ancient ruins, and feel the dirt between his toes-made up of the rotting bones and dry tears-of man. But, if he did succumb to love, there would always be the heart of a single animal, of which he could not have. His jaw would ache to kiss the insides of it’s open viscera, trembling with ache at the potent eroticism of cruor-laced bowels.

The creature whom he loved, would have lips that tasted of gunpowder, and Hannibal’s chest, was a battlefield demanding attention, from a mind of dismantled tragedy.

Still, he could never relax. His nights would grow restless. Devising a faux-almanac of terrifying wounds and insane collisions, he imagined his not to-be darling’s chest,impaled with his own desires. Handsome cheeks torn open on the chromium latches of quarter lights.    

To Lecter,these wounds formed a key to a new sexuality. Born from a perverse technology, the images of these lacerations hung in the gallery of his mind, like exhibits in the museum of a slaughterhouse.

And while, he knew he could never hold that honey-dew face between his hands, as it did not exist.He imagined it’s bashful features and delicate lips, in the aching safety of his fantasies. Slowly, he would fall to his knees and bury his face in the other’s yawning belly. Sinking his teeth into flesh that had gone the consistency of firm pudding. He would rip at the edges of the wound, pulling off strips of skin and meat,and swallowing them whole.His face smeared with his own saliva and what little juice remained in this chill tissue.

After all, death was both decadent and symmetrical. And to feel his lover’s lifeless toes and the cold bottoms of one’s feet, caressed by his hands, was love. As there was nothing else like it, to put the _ blood back _ , into the language of  _ touch _ .

Having gotten lost in his thoughts, he seemed to have momentarily forget of his brother’s aching form, just a few doors down. And when he stood up, his knees creaked with the tired sadness of age-that even the most rigorous diet and self-care, could not curb. His footsteps shadowed alongside the walls,as he entered his bedroom, and found Nigel just as he had left him.

A rotting ,bloodied, mess, the other’s hairs were messy-tangled-but somehow managed to elegantly cup his face- and gently kissed the bridge of his nose. Hannibal made care, to swipe a lose strand from Nigel’s eyes. But it would be the most touch that he would dare express-that fell into a realm of affection. As he had lost the taste for such a practice long ago-after all, the less you pitied a thing-the easier it was to heal using the unorthodox.

“Come Nigel, the bath is ready. You reek of blood and sinew-it would be best to sleep once you are clean-otherwise your identity is a dead give away.” Once again, he extended his hand towards his twin-helping him up-he supported the other’s weight on his shoulders. But somehow, Nigel felt significantly thinner, as he led the both of them into the bathroom.

___

The mere wispy cloud of steam seeping through the bathroom door is enough to lure him back into sleep, or what it seems like an endless vortex of oblivion. How long this act of concupiscence, more than anything as he desired for the caressing ripples of foamy surface glide against his stained skin had vexed him since long. If it had been enough to assuage disquieted mind of his, Gabi’s heavy jet black eyeliner and her pale flesh stares back to him like an apparition, someone who he had been acting solely on acquisitive impulses more than anything else. 

His form and him resting on the bed like a compliant wildcat, entombed under his own filth of rusty blood and sweat discoloring and tainting in what it’s supposed to be his sanctuary makes him to feel worthless and abdicated. A drifter since his childhood years, he had not a place to call home. Even when he had been in his dank and shady home like an underground wine cellar, all the appurtenances of his profession seemed to loom him. Many of his unsuspecting subordinates had perished, spilling thick puddle of ominous blood as his equally sinister, downward gaze had literally absorbed and reflected the very sight that he lived by. The battered and beaten heap of collapsed body emitting an antic energy as his adrenaline rushing veins throbbed and twitched. Sheer raw anger exerted upon, even more so than necessary. 

Having dealt with mortality innumerable times with others as much as his own, the blood red had been with him ever since when he had to defend himself against even bigger bullies than himself. Lanky but broad, slender but packed with muscles, in abeyance of all melee-fighting and the lack of human anatomy skills, his inveterate skills followed with instinct. Like a baby pup knowing how to live on their own inside the deep waters without learning how to strike its prey, he countered the underestimation with a vicious attack, making his opponent to acquiesce. The resulting abrasions in Gabi and his temporal relationship a soundless kindle of renewed anger, blazing through every nerve of his body as he once thought his own corporeality had been adamantine and formidable, impenetrable as it already had been shattered to infinitesimal pieces. When he had nothing to mend nor fortify himself, he couldn’t just relinquish the  _ amour fou _ of his liaison with what he had with his ex-wife, even risking his death in the process.    

A futile attempt at slowing down his pulse as the fluctuating rhythm thumps against his eardrum, a twitching set of hands lift the hem of the soiled shirt. Without his customized gold-capped revolver, lips feel like the rice paddies splintered all over due to long drought. Crude, irregular and jagged, in his heavyhearted nonchalance, a gaze desolate as his imminent fate. Morose thoughts emerge as pale complexion tenses, jaws and dewlap tightening ever so slightly as the contusion spreads like a sinister aura, the color deep purple. Feeling like a plucked and withering crimson rose with faint trace of metallic tang, fingers like scythes clasp tightly around the pristine sheets, naked emotions pour out like a crumbled hydroelectric dam. Perhaps he’s the one restrained by his ankle, helplessly hanging to prolong his sorry life by shedding tears and dribbling blood.  

His hair unkempt but not out of place as hazel brimming with unfathomable lassitude gazes up, palm dripping wet of the blood. The torn stitches flutter as if it has its own life as it does his gradually escalating heartbeat. Despite his sloven appearance and slouched form, albeit lightheaded and a whirling dizziness begins to fog up his alert hazel, Hannibal’s silhouette, taking a form of a spreading prism, breaks through his own form as his transfixed stare remains open as it had been awhile. A minute scowl as the torn up stitches quiver as an almost imperceptible sigh rattles his chest. 

Fingers lacing firmly as his burdensome weight lifts against his twin’s support, an arm winds around Hannibal’s broader shoulders as gravelly grunt creases his brows. “Bring your damn medical satchel, I need you to tear these fucking stitches off and redo them over.” Knowing how his skin looks by now, it’s pretty evident even without lacking the medical knowledge. He had gone through it before without any aid of anesthesia nor painkillers. Already familiar with such torment which breath-stopping agonizing pain will make him black out, it would be better than getting infections and suffer more than it is necessary.  

 


	5. Chapter 5

He watches Nigel, eyes heavy-lidded, as if he wishes to crawl out of his own flesh, from sheer boredom. It was mundane to him, of course, the other’s dirtied form, having grown emaciated, and littered with self-kept scars, was a sight he had seen plenty of in his younger years. Skin, tore open and rotting, full of pus, had been felt up by his own hands-which had been shoved deep inside of dying wounds-. 

His first love, had been a women’s bowels; so ripe and full of bloodlust-he wished to press the pulsating organ to his famished lips. He swore then, he could never devote his heart to anything other than the flourishing red of her innards. In the dimly-lit operating room, he made love to her with his scapel, and sealed their marriage, with an inseparable stitch to her stomach.  Yet, he could feel Nigel’s decaying form sagging on his toilet seat, where he had left him. His plumes of breath, as weak as broken string, Hannibal could easily pull his brother’s gasp from between his lips. But he nodded along with Nigel’s request to be medicated, yet deep within his gut, a kind of anger bubbled-angry and tar-like-it clogged his veins with hatred.

Perhaps it had been the years spent in isolation from one another, but he felt a deep disconnect in the face of their lineage. Betrayal, in fact, was a better word. Lecter was ripping open at the seams, with memories of psuedo-happiness. Childhood laughter was replaced with his own frustration, as he drowned pages from his private notes into the toilet, in the seclusion of his dorm room. He had been inflamed, at the time, when he had been made aware of Nigel’s lifestyle-and the countless needles and prescriptions-he downed his arteries in, ritualistically. Having been his brother’s protector since early adolescence, he felt as if had somehow failed against his perfectionist nature. 

It was then, that he developed the habit of viewing the other as a blemish on his life of perfect deception. A record he could not destroy, Nigel was forever taunting Hannibal’s illusion of beauty. And he hoped, in secret, that the other would die an early death, or so Lecter would be the one to kill him with his own bare hands, spilling tainted blood all over his kitchen floor. Only then would he be satisfied. But now, as if out of sheer fate, Nigel was very much vulnerable-and  _ begging _ for his own staged demise-and it would only take but a flick of his blade, for Hannibal to rid him of this earth forever.

“Give me a moment.” He said, before exiting the room. And upon his return, he carried between his arms a medical satchel-displaying it’s contents on the bathroom floor, as he bent down on his knees, before Nigel. Carelessly, he unbuttoned the other’s shirt and forced it to hang loosely at his elbows-revealing the puffy and graying lacerations-that littered his brother’s gut. He shook his head in disapproval, and looked up at Nigel, with ire in his glare. “You should have sought a doctor’s care for these long ago. Sometimes you think too highly of yourself, and one day, your own stubbornness will land you in a grave.”

Grabbing antiseptic and a needle with thread, from within his bag, he wiped Nigel’s wounds down, before clawing at the poorly stitched threads-causing them to come apart easily at Hannibal’s touch. One by one, he plucked the dirtied black fabric from between the other’s flesh, watching his reflection in a pair of scissors. Finally, his hands caked in dried blood, he watched Nigel’s expression, as he bit apart a thread with his teeth, wetting the lose string with his tongue, as he drove it through the needle. “Hold still.”, he whispered, as he held onto Nigel’s thigh-just in case the other choose to jump in protest-knocking the momentum from Hannibal’s movements.

When finished, he smiled in approval, and craned his head back, as if admiring a work of art. Nigel’s wounds had never looked better, clean, and stitched closed by a deft hand.He stood up, brushing his knees off, as he recollected his supplies, and placed it a top of the sink.” I do hope you will not be requiring my help undressing. You are no longer a boy, and so, you can take care of that part on your own. Feel free to use whatever supplies provided, and I will go easy on you- and say that you do need to worry about cleaning up after yourself-as your state proves you will fall asleep any given moment now. I will be downstairs preparing supper, do call if you need anything,  _ Nigel _ .” He said with a smirk, before exiting the bathroom, shutting the door gently behind himself.

___

The porcelain of the toilet frigid against his sweltering form, the torpidity swallows him whole like a quick-sinking sand, decomposing and disintegrating into atoms. Completely encased in person suit, both figuratively and literally, Nigel does not know what kinds of scars his twin holds. Except a little nicks and gashes here and there, but Hannibal had never been the mischievous and dashingly active. Industrious and purposeful at every infinitesimal thing he does, buried behind piles of anatomical books and not caring one bit about what the other did. A child encased inside a sixty-year-old scholar and virtuoso. Hannibal seems to have skipped all the conventionality of the mischievous and irresponsible kid, too caught up in tomes of infinite knowledge, than keeping company with him or others. 

Entrapped in the vicious circle of remorse and resentment towards his twin, those concurrent and opposite emotion had shattered his identity since their fate diverted dramatically. Despite being twins, there had been nothing common about them. Of course, there was no denying that they were indeed two separate beings, but drawing away from the general belief of twins dressing alike and having similar interests, even their identical facade seems to suggest otherwise. Cold nonchalance contained in those contrasting maroon oozing menace and intensity. Even Hannibal’s stoic posture a searing reminder of how stark opposite they really were. Like the opposite magnetic fields, but never drawn towards each other until now. A hint of boiled anger, brimming off as he senses the other’s conspicuous gaze. Very akin to when how his hazel would smolder with burning embers. Manifesting like the spewing fire from the flamethrower without becoming too obvious. 

That hint of derogatory gaze, like he had been imperfect, not meeting his set expectations as his debauched and carefree life continued. Even if he had an anchoring individual such as his brother by his side, his corruption full of salaciousness and ephemeral ecstasy would have continued no matter what. An irreparable fault of Hannibal’s grandeur of aestheticism. The other gloating over the ill-omen of luck which is bound to happen with his libertine lifestyle.   

A predator cornered into being a wounded animal, which he once had been already at his dank flat of Bucharest, now in half a globe away, reduced down to a starved and diminishing prey entrapped in apex predator’s inescapable shackles. Under leonine veil of his locks cupping his face, indistinguishable hazel orbs incinerate with both rage and cognizant gaze. No matter how much his incontinence tainted the Lecter blood and Hannibal’s condescension persisted, he would perpetuate his name, entirely on his own.  

Deciding against making a caustic remark, his depleted form remains tightly coiled and tense like a king cobra ready to strike. No matter how debilitated or incapacitated he gets, a predator is always a predator. An inveterate language which both Lecters speak so eloquently. Another imperfection removed from his battle-tested skin as angry, distorted and flayed skin appears before him, the sensation spreading and surging upwards like noxious fumes. 

The last trace of his inseparable identity stripping off, unblinking gaze transfixes against Hannibal’s hand, more so, on those tips and pieces of old suture falling off like a scab. Reaching the boiling point as he reciprocates the pent-up fury seething outwards through his epidermal, an apparent scowl countenances across his ghastly facade. “Being a fucking criminal has its disadvantage,  _ Hannibal _ . I would’ve seen the fucking doctor long before when the opportunity presented. How apt it is to have a doctor brother who thinks himself much supreme.” 

Growing reticent as he continues to lock his gaze onto those fingers, both susceptible to healing and destroying life alike. His had been exceptional at self-destruction and wrecking others’ lives altogether. The searing sting of the half-healed wound separating yet again under those shears, tense muscles tighten even further as toes curl, heel lifting upwards as knuckles turn white. Still weary, but knowing those glistening metal won’t be eviscerating him once again, causing him to exsanguinate like he once did. 

Dexterous, impeccable as  _ always _ , no matter how much intense aversion towards the other overwhelms him, he relinquishes and surrenders to his corporeal needs. Drowning Hannibal’s voice as he registers the state of his undress, he flashes a sarcastic smirk, tugging the frayed jeans and the rest of clothes off as soon as his brother’s form disappears behind the door. Filmy orbs finally fluttering close as combination of blood, sweat and pus swirls and taints the very water caressing his naked form, teeth clenches and clicks together, determined to remain conscious no matter how arduous the task seemed to be. 

 


End file.
